Chips are down for loggers

THE constant dull roar of heavy machinery was regularly punctuated by the loud cracking of a tree. The loggers in the state's south-eastern forests were going about their business uninterrupted.

At Eden a new Japanese vessel headed into the harbour to load woodchips for Nippon Paper Industries and the Itochu Corporation, two of Japan's biggest paper manufacturers.

A handful of anti-logging activists, including the former fashion designer Prue Acton, surveyed some of the flattened coupes with dismay.

"We have decided our campaign," she said. "Natural native forests are part of the essential solution to climate change, water and biodiversity."

The forestry industry fears some activists are planning a blockade next month when logging moves to a new site near Bermagui.

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"Green groups have indicated they are likely to physically oppose this harvesting operation and blockade general access," said Vince Phillips, of South East Fibre Exports, which is owned by the Japanese paper companies.

The industry is aware it is facing a far bigger challenge than a blockade, however. New scientific research is threatening to reshape the toxic politics of the forestry debate. Australian National University researchers, led by Brendan Mackey, have found that native forests store far more carbon dioxide that previously thought and could be crucial to climate change policy. It is called the "green carbon" argument.

A study by the university's Dr Judith Ajani also argues that Australia is about to face a bumper supply of plantation timber that could allow it to hugely scale back native forest logging while still producing enough hardwood and softwood for domestic use and export.

Deforestation and native forest degradation are estimated to account for some 20 per cent of Australia's annual net greenhouse gas emissions. Dr Mackey says the Government cannot ignore the carbon benefits of protecting Australia's native forests.

"We need a broader, more sophisticated debate that recognises green carbon," he said.